


the long road to canaan

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Cuddling, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, inclement weather, snowpocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he can think about is holding her, and, after the shot of adrenaline he’s been running on since he received her frantic phone call an hour ago, it’s all he wants to do. But he keeps his hands to himself, because they still haven’t decided what <i>they</i> are, and maybe sweeping her into his arms wouldn’t be appropriate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the long road to canaan

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little romantic, feel-y fluff. Hope you all like it. 
> 
> The title comes from Simon & Garfunkel's [Bleecker Street](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIlHdCpY4Kw), which I listened to many times while writing this.
> 
> Many thanks go to the wonderful ellienop for her cheerleading. It's at least partly her fault that this story got finished.

Bucky arrives at the door to the West Village apartment Darcy shares with Jane a few minutes past eleven at night. He’s covered in snow, just from the walk from his car to her building; it’s melting off of him in rivulets, soaking the floor. 

As he crossed from Brooklyn into Manhattan, he saw the lights in the Village go out, the power lines no match for tonight’s epic snowstorm, and the hallway is illuminated by bright emergency lights.

When she opens the door, she’s wearing leggings and a hideous purple sweater; her hair is tied back and her face is bare. He loves seeing her like this – comfortable and at home – and the sight sends an immediate wave of need through him. 

Suddenly all he can think about is holding her, and, after the shot of adrenaline he’s been running on since he received her frantic phone call an hour ago, it’s all he wants to do. But he keeps his hands to himself, because they still haven’t decided what _they_ are, and maybe sweeping her into his arms wouldn’t be appropriate.

“I came as fast as I could. It’s fucking crazy out there.”

She nods and waves him inside the pitch-black apartment, closing and locking the door securely behind him.

“I got all the candles out,” she tells him breathlessly, gesturing in the dark towards her coffee table. It’s covered in colorful, scented candles, the type she and Jane keep in the bathroom and in their bedrooms. “But my lighter’s dead. _Bucky_ —“

Even in the dark, he can see the look she gives him – wide-eyed and imploring and anxious. She only ever calls him “Bucky” in bed, and her use of the name now fills him with a mix of fondness and concern.

“I got a lighter,” he puts his flesh-and-bone hand on her shoulder. He can feel how tense she is. “Where’s Jane?”

“At the Tower with Thor.”

Bucky nods, but something inside him bristles at the idea of her being left alone on a night like this, when she’s clearly so worked up.

“So, what’s going on?” On the phone, she sounded stressed and frazzled, and it made his chest clench to hear it.

She looks up at him helplessly for a long moment. He can see that something’s wrong; she’s lost all of her usual sass and snark, and in its place she just seems uncharacteristically defenseless.

“I just—I hate storms.”

Bucky blinks at her. He can feel his brow furrow.

“Are you kidding me?” He can’t help that he snaps at her – it just happens. Part of comes from the rush of relief that flushes through him as he realizes that the worst-case scenarios he’s been envisioning for the last hour haven’t happened. Part of it comes from the memory of how many times his car slid out on the drive over.

She frowns and looks away.

“Darce, I live in Brooklyn. And there’s a blizzard out there. Remember? The ‘snowpocalypse’?” He mutters the last word – it’s a term she’s been using (and he’s been telling her to _stop_ using) ever since the first weather forecasts came in. Even now, he can hear the wind whine outside her window.

Darcy pulls the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. Even in the dark, he can tell that she’s flushed and embarrassed. She turns her face away from him; her voice sounds small and miserable.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you.” 

Bucky feels everything inside him freeze. He’s so fucking stupid. A fog is lifted, and he can see what really happened: she had been nervous and lonely and called _him_ , wanted _him_. And hadn’t he practically bolted out the door to get to her? The realization shoots through him; it makes him cringe and choke up.

“’S’alright,” he tells her gruffly, “I’m here now, anyway.” He hands her the Zippo from the front pocket of his jeans and shoos her away, just to let him have a moment.

While Darcy lights the array of candles collected on her coffee table, Bucky shucks off his boots and jacket, placing them carefully on the rack by the door. It feels foreign to be the person someone calls like this. The last relationship he can remember having was with Natasha, back in the bad old days of the Red Room and the Winter Soldier, and she was never the type to ask for help, from him or from anybody else. It surprises him how good it feels to be relied on, to be _asked_ ; there’s something solid and intimate about the responsibility of it.

When he turns back into her living room, it’s illuminated by a soft, golden glow. Darcy’s looking out the window at the dark, snow-covered streets. He’s determined to make up for his uncontrollable surliness. He’s determined to show her that he can be the man she wants him to be tonight. He rolls his shoulders, takes a breath, and heads towards her.

“Ugh,” she shivers, “Power outages creep me out. I feel like this is the part where the Cloverfield monster destroys New York and eats us all.”

Bucky chuckles and flops down on her couch. “You watch too many movies, kiddo.”

Darcy turns to glare at him, but he just smiles at her and pats the couch cushion next to him. 

Most of their assignations have been at his apartment in Brooklyn, when they haven’t been in storage closets and empty offices at SHIELD headquarters. They tend to avoid her place, because Jane’s usually there, and Bucky has the distinct feeling that she doesn’t like him much. But even though Darcy shares the apartment with Jane, he can see her all over – in brightly colored throw pillows and goofy candid photos hung on the wall with thumbtacks.

She takes a seat next to him. She’s sitting so close to him, with the length of her thigh pressed warm against his, that when she turns to him, her lips curved up into a smirk and her pale skin lit up in candlelight, it’s all Bucky can do not to kiss her.

“Lucky for us, I’ve got a little something to calm my nerves.”

She bounces up from the couch and stumbles into the darkness, using the light from her cell phone to see. When she comes back, sitting next to him again, she holds up a long, slender cigarette.

Bucky gives her a withering look, until he gets a whiff of it and his eyes widen.

He looks at her incredulously. “Where did _you_ get _that_?”

“What are you, a cop? I know a guy.”

“You know a guy,” he repeats slowly, trying to push away the prickle of suspicion at the back of his mind.

Darcy huffs and sets the joint between her lips. She still has his lighter, and she holds the flame over the end until it glows red.

She inhales, and exhales, long and slow. 

“Jane’s going to smell this and kill me,” she tells him as she passes it over, “So we better appreciate it.” 

He takes it from her. “You two not on good terms?”

“I love Jane, but sometimes—“ Darcy stops herself, sighs and throws up her hands. Even though she doesn’t finish, he has a pretty good idea what she means. He’s felt the same thing about Steve too many times not to. She looks up at him, grinning impishly, “You know, she thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”

Bucky cocks an eyebrow, “Guess she doesn’t know you very well.”

She laughs and tips her head onto his shoulder. Bucky passes the joint back and fiddles with his hands in his lap. He can feel her relax against him.

“What’s with you and storms?” he asks after a while, because he can tell there’s _something_ there.

She purses her lips. A part of her doesn’t want to tell him about how snowstorms scared her as a child, how it only made it worse when her father was stranded at the office and she and her mother would have to wait until the roads were cleared and the phone lines were restored to know if he was alright. But she tells him anyway. 

After a while, she lays back on the couch, with her legs draped across his lap. She’s dreamy and open, babbling about stupid SHIELD gossip and how she hates it when Jane gets on her case about the dirty dishes in the sink.

Bucky keeps his hands on her legs, his fingers skimming along her fabric-covered thighs and calves and hooking under her knees. The low light turns her dark hair golden, lights her up, makes her look incomparably beautiful. He tries hard to focus on what she’s saying, but all he can concentrate on is the cleft between her thighs, the curve of her breasts under the knit of her sweater, and the warmth of her under his hand. 

The last time he saw her was during one of Tony’s insufferable movie nights – the kind of corny team-building activities that Bucky only attends because Steve makes him and Darcy’s there. He had sat next to her, alone in the back row of Tony’s ostentatious private theater, pleased that she didn’t mind the rest of the team seeing them together. In the dark, he’d slipped his hand under her skirt, pushed aside her panties and buried two fingers insider her up to the knuckle, grinding the heel of his palm against her clit. Before the credits rolled, he’d made her come twice, with her head pressed back against the seat, biting back a moan.

But sex with Darcy isn’t just sex. When she lets him between her legs, with his hands and mouth and cock, for once it isn’t just base instinct. It feels like being _let in_. Like maybe he doesn’t have to be alone anymore.

Now, with Darcy half on his lap in her candlelit apartment, the scene’s playing on a loop in his brain. He’s glad her knees are bent just over his lap – it’d be hard to keep up the illusion of attention if she knew about the hard bulge tenting his jeans. 

It must be a little obvious that he’s distracted, though, because she bumps his chest with her knee to get his attention. “Hey. What’re you doing for Christmas?”

Bucky shrugs and shifts in his seat.

“Stark’s planning something for us misfits and orphans. Steve’s forcing me to go with him.”

Darcy frowns and stretches towards the table to stamp out the tiny stub of a joint. “Jesus, Barnes. That might be the saddest thing I’ve heard all week.”

“’S just another day for some of us. What about you? Going to see your family?”

She nods, staring at him thoughtfully. “You should come with me.”

The idea is so preposterous, he almost laughs.

“To Virginia? You _are_ stoned, Lewis.”

Darcy looks at him seriously, her brow furrowed. “Why not?”

Bucky gives her a lascivious grin, laying it on thick. “I’m not the guy you take home to mom and dad.”

She rolls her eyes. “I like you better than most of the guys I’ve introduced them to.”

“Look at you,” Bucky smirks at her, sliding his hand up to the waistband of her leggings. His calloused fingertips brush against her bare stomach. “All sweet on me.”

She bats him away. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Maybe another time,” he tells her quietly, his hand retreating back down the line of her thigh, “You should be with your family. I’m sure they miss you. Bet you miss them, too.”

He watches her think about that for a long moment, then she looks back at him. 

“Is that how Christmas was for you? With your family? Do you—Do you remember?”

Three months ago, he would have answered a question like that with some combination of incoherent cursing, punching things and storming off. But Darcy’s so damn far under his skin, he can barely manage a flinch.

“What makes you think I had a family? Maybe I just washed up on the beach like this one day.”

“Bucky…” she starts, but he shakes his head to silence her. It’s a long time before he starts talking again.

“I had a sister. I remember _her_.” Darcy goes perfectly still. His voice is so low, so barely-audible that she has to strain to hear him. “I never had any money. Nobody did. This time of year, I used to take her to Gimbels and get a five-finger discount on somethin’ pretty she liked.”

He shrugs, as if to tell her that’s all he has to say on the subject. Darcy leans up onto her elbows, then sits up, sliding her legs off his lap and curling them underneath her. It’s getting darker – a few of the candles have drowned themselves in their own melted wax – but he can see that her eyes are watery. 

“Don’t you dare pity me, Lewis,” he growls.

She holds her hands up defensively, then moves them to the sides of his face, her fingers stroking the stubble along his jawline. She hooks a thigh over his hip and shifts onto his lap.

“I don’t,” she murmurs, “I’m not. I just—I’m glad you're here tonight.”

He puts his hands on her waist, slides them up her sweater and around her back. _God_ , but she runs him through sometimes. Times like this, she puts his heart through such a workout, it feels like it takes a massive effort just to keep it beating.

She tips her head towards his, resting her right temple against his left. Her mouth hovers near his, but even though she’s straddling him, even though she’s wrung some of his most closely-guarded secrets out of him and laid him low, he still isn’t sure if she’s his to take. But then her fingertips push into his hair and her hips press down into his. 

“You can kiss me, you know,” she whispers, with a playful grin, and he’s undone.

In another second, his mouth is on hers, and she’s kissing him back. Her mouth is warm and wet, and as insistent as his. The slide of her tongue against his makes him shudder and pull away, just long enough to pull off her leggings and strip off her sweater. Naked, Darcy stretches out on the couch like an odalisque in one of Steve’s art books. She parts her knees just enough for Bucky to see that she’s wet for him already, her folds glistening in the dim light.

Bucky pulls off his shirt, pants, and boxers, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and covers her body with his. He slides his real hand between them, to her center, and _oh_ everything there is liquid and molten. The feel of her shatters him; she makes him feel like he’s falling to pieces.

“Darcy—“ he gasps against her shoulder.

She strokes his hair with two shaking hands. “Come inside me now.”

And he does. 

He’s only had her like this, without a condom, a few times. It was just two weeks ago that she’d explained to him that she was on the pill, and not seeing anyone else, and told him that he didn’t have to wear one if he didn’t want to. He’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t taken full advantage of her offer, since he was clean and didn’t ( _want to_ ) have anyone else, either. But it meant something to him that she trusted him that much.

Now, with her sodden and tight around him, it’s all he can do to keep a steady rhythm, pumping into her in long, deep strokes, with one hand on her clit and his mouth on hers. In the past three months, he’s made it his business to figure out all the different ways to make Darcy come, and he makes quick work of it now. On any other night, he’d keep her going for hours, but, frankly, they’re both too wrung out from everything else that’s happened tonight for him to string her along.

She lets loose a long sob as she comes, with her legs wrapped tight around his waist and one hand gripping the couch cushions. She chants his name as her inner walls pulse around him, and it’s more than he can stand. He follows her, emptying into her with a low groan and a deep thrust.

Neither of them can bring themselves to move for a several, long minutes, until Darcy finally sits up, pushing him off of her (rolling her eyes at the pout he gives her), and disappearing into the dark hall. As he pulls his boxers back on, Bucky hears the water in the bathroom run, and a few minutes later she reappears, carrying pillows and wearing the down comforter from her bed around her shoulders like a cape.

She bends to blow out the remaining candles. Bucky lays himself out on the couch and she settles in next to him, with her face pressed against his bare chest and the huge blanket tucked around them. 

“When I called you, I didn’t know if you would come,” she says, her breath hot against his skin. 

“I did.”

She smiles up at him, then presses her body tight against his and settles her head onto his shoulder. “I know.”

**

Bucky wakes up before she does. Darcy’s still pressed against him, the same as she was when he drifted to sleep the night before, with her naked breasts and belly soft against him and her legs tangled up in his. It’s warm, and a little sweaty, under the heavy down blanket, but he doesn’t mind.

The apartment is filled with bright, white light, a reflection of the newly-fallen snow outside. Around eight, he starts to hear the loud rumble of snow plows on the street below. She startles awake as they pass her building, her head lifting and her eyes searching the room.

“They’re just clearin’ the roads,” he tells her.

Her head falls back down onto his shoulder and she sighs. “Do you have to go?”

He smiles down at her and presses his lips to her forehead, “Not ‘til you tell me to, kid.”

“Mmm,” she hums, nuzzling at the base of his neck and sliding her fingers into the waistband of his boxers. “Just a little longer then.”


End file.
